GP Recap and Practice

This is, is off track , uh, hello And welcome everyone to Off Track with Hinch Rossi.

Um, last, uh, last episode, the Tuesday episode.

If you're here to hear about my child.

Um, go listen to that one.

'cause we're gonna talk about race cars, um, in this one. And

He's not talking about Tim.

Mm. Mm-hmm. Well,

we do mention Tim a little bit in that one. We do,

We do. Unfortunately.

It's funny. Someone, someone came up to me

during the NDGP weekend, and again, still, still blown away by everyone who, who listens to the podcast.

But this, uh, this one, this one girl lady, uh, came up to me and, uh, she said something kind of under her breath and I didn't really capture all of it, but I heard little words and I was like, oh, yeah, like that was, that was probably a mistake.

Um, 'cause she said something like, burn a hat.

Like shouldn't I thought she said, I shouldn't have burned this hat.

And I kind of laughed and said, oh yeah, I was ping a mistake.

And so she took like an autograph card and, and kept walking and Ed was standing next to me and he was like, what did, what did she say?

I said, I don't, I don't really know.

Well, the next lady right behind her said what turned out being the exact same thing, just a little bit clearer.

And she said, Tim signed my hat in Nashville and I should have burned it.

And I said, yeah, nice.

I wanna be clear because I remember this because I don't get asked to sign a lot of hats .

He was like, Hey, well you signed my hat.

And I go, are you sure this will devalue the hat ?

Like, I made it very good. Like, yeah, no, sign the hat.

I was like, okay. They good in that. I no one. Yeah. Yeah.

Well they, I warned them , like, I think if they wanted you to sign it just so they could like make the like commit the act of burning the hat that you would sign. Yes.

And I get that. I get that right. Yeah.

The only time I've ever signed an article of clothing without somebody asking me to was one time I signed Orio Serbia shirt.

Just 'cause I thought it was funny.

He was like in the middle. He, did

You find it funny?

He did not . He was in the middle of talking everybody.

And I did that thing, you know, where you come up and you're like, gonna pretend to sign it, but he didn't react, so I panicked and then I like really just signed his shirt.

And so he was just walking around with my signature on his shirt for the rest of the Day.

It seems like a really poor reaction to a high stress situation. Yeah, it

Wasn't, it wasn't great.

I'm not saying like, I'm coming outta that like 10 outta 10 Tim, no notes. Well,

I think what we've learned kids is, uh, don't sign people's clothing without being asked to do that.

Well, or if you're going to do it, don't do what old, uh, Juan Pablo Montoya did.

So I was, um, sitting next to, I was doing an autograph session for an IMSA event Road Atlanta, I think.

And the sixth car at Team Penske at the time was Dan Cameron, Simon Pau and Juan Montoya.

And I was sitting next to Simon.

And so basically Simon was in between me and Juan.

And Simon, uh, has long had a rashard meal, uh, deal.

And so for people that don't know what Rashard meal is, it's like they are pretty much the pinnacle of, of watches, especially in the sporting arena.

Um, you know, they are at the same tier as an AP or a Hubo or whatever.

And, um, Simon had a white watch and Juan with a black Sharpie reached over and signed during the autograph session, Simon's White Rashard Mill.

And you can imagine the reaction that Simon had and one kind of just Yes, Just for the people at home.

That's a six figure watch, like Minimum that Yeah.

Like that. That's a six watch. That's figure watch.

That's a modest house in the Midwest. Yeah.

On his wrist. That,

That.

And so you, you can imagine Simon's reaction, he was seething.

I can't, I can't imagine.

I don't even know what I would, I think I might stab him.

I think I might've stabbed him not like to death. Right.

But like I would've paled him with something. Yeah.

Yeah. Hmm. Wow.

Got a stain on one of his objects, meaning blood on his shirt. .

Right.

Yikes. Okay. Yeah. So just don't sign stuff

unless someone asks you to sign it.

Yeah. Especially if it's,

Especially if it's with the caveat, With the caveat that if it's oral serb it's fine.

Hmm. I don't, I'm gonna, I he'll love it.

Fundamentally disagree. He, we just,

we have now evidence anyways.

I bought him a new moving on. I bought GP

Guys, NGP happened.

So let's run through your race weekend and then we can run through the race itself. No. Yes. Yep.

Um, uh, ECR historically pretty strong at any road course.

Um, we, uh, we qualified ninth.

I thought we were maybe a seventh place car.

Maybe it could have snuck into the fast six.

Um, we, it's, it's, it's funny. IndyCar's tough.

IndyCar's tough. It's tough. It's tough. It's tough.

I don't know how else to say it. So is in car tough?

We combine when, when you combine the, the kind of round one qualifying times, we were third, um, and went into round two and lost a 10th.

Um, just picked up a, a slight bit of under steer that I just, quite honestly, these cars are very, um, they're very track temperature sensitive.

Indie GP has always been track temperature sensitive.

When you're that strong in the first round, it's very hard to change anything, even though in your gut, you know, you should.

So I waffled for a while and I ultimately said, don't do it.

We should've added a little bit of front wing.

Um, and we missed transferring by like four hundreds, which is like the name of the game.

Like everyone has that story.

Um, I don't think anyone clearly was good enough for Pole, but could we have fought in the fast six?

Possibly. But regardless, we started ninth.

Um, the car had been pretty much in the window all weekend, uh, until Saturday.

Um, so we, we were one of the cars that used, so going into the weekend, we, we talked about the, the new tire, uh, requirements during the race.

Um, one of the things that came out of having to run two primaries and two alternates in the race was they got rid of the rule where you have to run new, um, alternates.

And they also got rid of the rule where you have to give back a set of alternates before the race.

So historically, um, because you had to give the setback, a lot of teams would run alternates in practice one.

Yeah. You had to give 'em back after practice one.

I'm sorry, you had to give 'em back after practice one.

They got rid of that rule for an unknown reason.

And so it basically gave you carte blanche, uh, to use the alternate tires as you saw fit.

So we were one of the cars four sets. You had four sets.

We were one of the cars that used a set in practice two, just to get a glimpse of what it was gonna be in qualifying, which was really, I was relieved that we did, because we missed it.

We missed the balance in practice two.

Um, so we were able to make adjustments going into qualifying.

'cause otherwise we would've been like P 20.

Um, so it was good that we, we did that.

But what that meant was we ran, used alternates for banker tires, um, for rounds one and two.

And why that's important is because essentially going into warmup, I had a very used set of alternates and a very used set of primaries, um, from practice one.

And so we, we were pretty bad in warmup, but we put it down to tires.

You know, the alternates had 12 laps on 'em.

The primaries had 18 laps on 'em. We were loose.

It was like, yeah, that's to be expected.

We often talk about warmup, you know, you can't really read into it.

Where I think we missed was we just, we looked at warmup as warmup.

Oh, you can't read into it.

Not that you usually don't read into morning warmup at eight 30 in the morning.

Right. This was an 11, 11 45 warmup.

Um, and so we probably should have taken a little bit more credence in the balance that we had and we kind of just shipped it.

We just said, ah, it'll be fine. It's been fine all weekend.

It wasn't, um, and we honestly weren't, we weren't fast.

We were, yeah, we really struggled on both tires.

Um, the team did a good job trying to manage as best as we could and, and to capitalize as best as we could.

And we were, we were slogging through it.

Um, I think we would've finished 10th, 11th.

Um, but the way it all kind of cycled out, we were on the primary tire, um, to, to end the race and we had a pretty big buffer to like the, that next group of cars.

The 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th group.

Um, and felt pretty confident that we could maintain that kind of five and a half, six second gap to the end of the race unless of course there was a yellow.

Right. And we got a yellow, it, it was a fake yellow.

I mean, it was a real yellow in the sense that there was a safety car, but it was, it wasn't 'cause anyone crashed.

It was just a yellow 'cause a car broke mm-hmm .

Um, which is still mind boggling to me that we haven't had any yellows due to like cars crashing or contact or anything.

Which is, and like, again, confusing, We had, we had a little bit of contact in the first couple laps.

Erickson got dumped when his, uh, car slowed down with a mechanical problem, but like kept rolling and it was right in front of pit lane.

So he managed to get in.

Like there's so many things that were so close Yeah.

Before Mel Lucas's car stopped, but yeah. Yeah.

So we, we had to do a restart, um, and we were on primes and the five cars behind us were on alternates.

Um, so we ended up 14th, which I was talking to my engineer about it, like he was, we were both pretty disappointed 'cause we thought, you know, we had a opportunity based on the weekend to be, you know, a top five, top six car and to end 14th is, feels like a, a huge loss.

But like, it was such a bad day in terms of like how I felt in the car and, and, and our pace and all that sort of thing.

I was like, if that's, if that's our worst day is 14th, like we're, we're gonna be fine.

Like, this is all gonna be just fine.

So, um, just still need to, we haven't really had much time.

'cause after the race I left for obvious reasons, so I'm gonna head to the track here in a little bit.

We're, I had to go geting this on a Monday, um, to kind of do some more analysis of, of what we missed.

But ultimately, um, disappointing for the 20 car.

But that is what it is. It's fine.

So I, and I, I asked you this question earlier, but after thermal, okay?

Mm-hmm. So we're gonna get into the race.

We're gonna get into why, I mean, how Alex Polo is doing what he's doing. But

Do you know No, no, no.

We're, what we're gonna get into is how everybody's dumbfounded, but yes.

Yeah. Um, but one of the things that came outta thermal,

which was also like an interesting tire race and, and whatever was, you know, Alex ran third, that whole race, Patto led the whole day.

But in that final stint, Patto had to go to a used set of reds where Alex had a new set of reds and that new set on a high dig track, he just drove through everybody mm-hmm.

And won the race on a trot.

So with the way the tire rule played out, you had, um, everybody basically made the decision to save a new set for the race, even though that was no longer a requirement.

Mm-hmm . In qualifying, you could have burned 'em all,

but most people, I don't think anybody did.

Nobody that I know of did.

So everybody had their one new set for the race.

Uh, my question to you was, after what you saw Alex doing thermal after barber, where you came out on hards in the final stint and had to fight off guys that had softs.

What was the motivation for having hards on in that final stint?

'cause I know we hadn't had a yellow, but there was always a chance that a yellow could come out.

Um, so we started on the primary and we were, we were shocking shockingly bad on the prime.

Um, and so to give you, to give you guys some insight throughout the race, we took out six turns of front wing .

Okay. So what does that, what does that mean for people

who don't necessarily know when you take out a turn?

Well, usually, usually through an Indy car race, presuming it's dry Right.

And there's no, there's no, it doesn't start damp or whatever, right?

It's just a normal day. Um, as the rubber goes down

and cars are consistently running on track, usually the grip level increases and you're adding, usually you're adding bits of un of, of front wing throughout the race.

Um, uh, turn a front wing.

It's, it's team dependent, but it's about, um, 0.6, call it half a percent of COP.

Um, and COP center pressure is the arrow balance.

It's, it's a very controlling factor of the overall balance of the car. Um, you're

Putting more percentage of the down force on the front of the car when you're adding front Weight, when you're adding Exactly.

Yeah. Okay. Um, there's usually an offset, uh, a front wing

between alternates and primary tires.

'cause the alternates have a little bit more real grip.

And so you're trying to keep the balance the same between tires to take out six turns of front wing to remove.

Means that we started way outside the window, um, in that Whose car from warmup was just as loose in the race.

Yes. Yeah. How we got there still TVD.

But anyways, um, so we, we, we were shocking on the blacks.

And so we put on the alternate, we put on new alternates and we were hoping that that would solve some of our issues.

It did not. Um, so then it was like, all right,

well we gotta keep, we gotta keep working on the car.

Um, and we were so bad on blacks and the car's really not any better.

Let's put on used alternates and see if we can continue making this thing better.

Right. So it was, it was an effort to

see if we could get the car balance better.

By the time in our mind we had to put on the worst tire.

It ended up right by the time we got all the front wing out of it, the primes Right.

It actually was the right decision because we put the prime, our last stint on primes was actually our best stint.

Right, okay. Um, because the,

the balance was actually in the window more so.

Yeah. Even though it was the worst tire we were,

we were running better lap times.

So, um, it wasn't really, there was no strategic decision behind what we were doing.

Like we didn't think that was the right thing to do, but we were in a sense of desperation 'cause we were Fair enough.

Okay. Alright.

So the race as a whole, Alex Palou started on pole.

Uh, well actually hold on. Let's do a quick throwback

to qualifying and let's give credit where credit's due.

Uh, Raha Letterman landing and racing three cars in the fast six.

That is so hard to do.

It's so hard to get in the fast six with one car.

All of them. It wasn't even like oh two outta three.

They, they, they went in and put every single car there.

That is unbelievable.

Including a rookie. Penske Can't even do that. Right.

Penske had two of three and the third guy was seventh.

They did very well as well, but not as well. No.

So you had Graham on the front row.

You had Louis Foster third, you had had dev in fifth.

They were in the top five, three cars in the top five for any team.

That is insanity.

And uh, just huge credit to that whole group, uh, for pulling off what they did.

Obviously Alex used a slightly different tire strategy and so he was the only guy that had a set of stickers for Q3.

So I mean, the gap was like three or four tenths or whatever, but like, that was slightly four and a half tenths, four and a half tenths.

So slightly, uh, artificial exaggerated. Yeah.

But he was also quickest in pretty much every session and was gonna be on poll anyway, but it just made him look really, really good.

Um, also showed up because he was struggling with optics lately.

Yeah. , I'm glad, I'm glad something broke his way finally.

Yeah. Yeah. It's finally going his way.

Um, also, uh, shout out to K Simpson who had, uh, I think his best start and was quick all weekend and was, uh, was doing well with cani cars in general.

Were doing, doing pretty well.

We out qualified Dixon in the same car.

So, um, the Qualifi for the second week in a row.

There you go. Yeah, that's right.

So the race was interesting. Uh, no one again.

First race we were doing these new tire rolls.

So a lot to like figure out a lot to, for us to learn how teams thought it was gonna play out and, and who was gonna kind of employ what strategy.

Majority of the top guys started on Reds the start.

Graham got into the lead in a nice impressive move.

Dev got himself up into third Palo was sandwich in the middle and, and, and things were kind of off and running.

And so, yeah. So I mean for the, the first kind

of stint it was running around, uh, Graham and Alex were kind of back and forthing a little bit.

First stops same kind of thing, came on the same lap.

I think everything was pretty tight.

But Graham went a different route with tires and it was already starting to seem like this was gonna play out into Paolo's favor.

He was just kind of sitting back and waiting to see how this all unfolded.

And then even before we got to the final round of stops where Alex was gonna get to put on sticker reds, and I think Graham had to go to primaries, go to the blacks flow, just pulled 'em in, went by, 'em started driving away.

Then he got to put on his sticker.

Reds started driving away even more like nine seconds or something.

Then a yellow came out first restarts since St.

Pete, lapped five drove away again, still one by six seconds.

Like . It's outrageous man.

It's outrageous what's happening right now.

You're on the track, you're in the car, you can see competitor data.

You have more insight than either of us.

What is going on over there in the 10 car specifically?

Um, bro, it's, it's incredible.

Uh, so first of all, gsi McLaren kind of noticed this, this became pretty apparent at the thermal test in 2023.

Um, the GSI cars are, are the slowest cars on the street.

Um, more always.

And it's not like this is an open championship with Arrow.

Um, you're not cars.

I mean, there's a couple tracks that you trim at, but no one's trimming and qualifying.

Yeah. No one's trimming. Max Downforce

Pretty Much practice.

Right. Um, and, and they've been very slow in the straits.

What I take that to Ima to, to, to what I, the conclusion I draw from that is they're slow in the straits because they're generating drag, which means they're generating down force somewhere.

Um, but I'm not, I'm not kidding you James, through five events.

I don't think there's been a corner where I've been quicker than him.

Not one. Um,

and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not telling like, Ansy story 'cause I think it's the car.

Like it's clearly him as well, but like they, they have unlocked something.

Um, and he is able to extract all of it at all times.

Um, I was talking to Felix before the race and he has way more than competitor data.

He has actual, he's yeah. High data. Right.

And so the competitor data comes over telemetry and it's a little blotchy and, you know, you can get kind of indications, a sense of it.

Yeah. You're not gonna see the, the finite detail of it.

And, and Felix, as we all have discussed, he's one of the fastest guys in the series over overlap.

He's, he's, I would say in the top five of, of just purely the quickest dudes.

And I was like, what, what, what does the data look like?

And he was like, dude, you know the compare line ?

And I'm like, yeah. So the compare line is essentially you

set your lap as a delta and it says straight line.

It's a completely horizontal line. It's the benchmark time.

Right. And then you are, if, if there's a line

that goes below it, that means the car you're comparing to is faster and vice versa.

And a lot of times throughout a lab, especially when you're comparing to teammate cars, you'll see this kind of like almost heart rate effect. Yeah. You know, it's ebb

And flow. You dip above someone,

Someone charges more on entry, it gets a little worse exit.

Or someone's just really good through a sequence.

So they gain a, a 10th year, but you know, you're better in that sequence.

So you pull it back and you end, you know, a 10th apart or six hundreds apart or whatever.

Right. It, it ends up being pretty close to the same.

And if you were able to combine both your laps together, you'd probably gain two tenths.

The both of you. Right. Because you're both doing

good things throughout the lap.

He was like, bro, it's a completely diagonal line .

It's just every corner he's gaining. Yeah. The entire time.

Yeah. And it's just,

and he's like, I don't know what to tell you.

Like I more questions than answers .

Yeah, it sounds neat for him. Yeah.

But I mean, you're right. He's still gotta drive it.

He's still gotta execute.

The team does a, an incredible job in the pits.

You know, I think they call the strategy great.

They had that sticker set of reds at the end, which worked for them in thermal and was the move. But, but

Here's, here's the thing, James, they, the, the team on the, on the strategist engineering side and, and obviously Alex in the car, 'cause he's all drivers are part of, I hate when fans, you know, get on the internet and yell at the team like, oh, that was a strategy or how could you keep doing this?

Like, the drivers are very involved.

We are, they're very part of that. Yeah.

We're all making these decisions in the pre-event meetings together.

So it is, it is all of our inputs that gets us to that decision.

Um, and they are operating at such a high level of confidence that they can make these correct decisions because they know that even if the correct decision has a little bit of risk to it, Alex is gonna bail 'em out.

Or the, the, the 10, the 10 crew in pit lane will bail 'em out so they can make the correct decisions that are slightly high risk, high reward because they know that regardless they'll come out the other side of it, Case in point is the tire strategy going into qualifying.

Because like you mentioned, you, you try to set of the reds in practice to get that balance read.

Right. Which you said was the right move

because the spec, the balance as is just switching from blacks to reds would've been terrible.

Right. A about, I think it was like 10 cars,

11 cars, 12 cars, something like that.

Like almost half let's for easy math, let's call it roughly half the field use a set in practice for that same reason.

Right. Polo, like the canac.

The Penskes, those guys didn't do it what they did do.

Right. So keeping in mind you've got four sets

of sticker reds looking back on it now, most teams have decided they were gonna save one set for the race.

So you've got three sets now. Okay.

So in theory you could use one in Q1, one in Q2, one in Q3, almost everybody was like, look, if we throw on the reds and the balance is way off, we're gonna be starting 26.

So let's go red, red in Q1, two new sets, another new set in Q2 and then use, use reds in Q3 if you get through.

Which is kind of like almost a standard wave.

Yeah. You get two bites

of the apple one in round one if you, if you miss the balance right?

Yeah. So you can make an adjustment.

So the Penskes did it, they got, everybody did it, hello, did not do it.

He did banker on black On black, yep.

Threw his first set of stickers, reds on and just bam gets in.

And now he immediately is in the capper seat and like there's, it's almost impossible to beat him to pull after he does that as the only guy that did that.

So yeah, when you get to the fast six, he was the only one with a new tire to use and still have one for the race.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. The confidence you have to have

in your car and your driver and your information to pull that move off is wild to me.

What, I don't know.

I don't remember if like Kiffin did it maybe in practice.

And so the team had a little bit of a sense.

I don't know. I don't remember. Yeah, I don't know.

But still it's, it's, it's just, dude, they're just, they're just rolling right now.

They did test here. Um, so they had that going for them.

You know, obviously they didn't, they they also kind of tested in Barber because the MSR cars were there.

So, uh, this has been a good start to this season for them.

I can't see it continuing. Um, that doesn't mean it won't,

Statistically speaking it shouldn't, it just, that's just not how it works. But,

But yeah, I don't know.

We'll see. I mean he's, he's very,

he's very good at indie mm-hmm .

Um, you know, I think he's Very good at the open test I think in 2022.

Was it like he probably the year he was on pole, like he probably should have, I mean he should have been in contention to win that race if not winning. Yeah. And then he had that

Bone by arena.

Yeah, no, it was reus dumped him in pit lane.

Oh right. He still drove back

To fourth, Fifth.

Fourth, right. Fourth. Yeah. So that was 2022.

That wasn't 23. No, no,

22. Yeah, that makes sense.

McLaren car in 23. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, yeah and like in the open test he was quite, yeah.

We'll see man, we'll see what happens.

Obviously Indy's the hardest one to win because it's so much longer and so much more opportunity for stuff to go wrong. You're right.

And Sarah, way more luck. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, yeah, I, I don't wanna say it's more

of a lottery, but like luck plays a, has more opportunity to play with.

Look at 2016, it's a pretty big lottery. . I mean

You could also make that argument for the poll in 2016. That was total bull.

Alright. That's just luck of the draw.

No, that no, that was just, he, he got the sympathy Honda Horsepower. Yeah.

Sorry. You almost died. Here's a couple

Almost died.

Here's a couple extra hps .

No, they, they thought he was Satos car.

Yeah. It's still a good story.

So like all still a good story. Yeah,

Yeah, exactly.

Gotta can't let the facts get away. A good story .

Um, so yeah, so yeah, he just walked away. He, he killed it.

I gotta give Patto a big shout out.

That was a great drive from him.

He's, he's driving really well, man.

He's, he's doing like the, the championship run kind of drives where like he's not making mistakes when they have bad qualifyings.

He makes, you know, good decisions in the race and, and whatever that a decent qualifying but ended up P two. No,

James, you're absolutely right.

He is making a championship style run for second.

Correct? Yes. Yeah. I mean you have to win races

Still.

So, so no, so there was, there was a stat that, uh, our buddy Nathan Brown put out, um, I think it was yesterday, so bad someday, which just floored me.

And it was so upsetting. So he essentially said, all right,

Remember we're five races In, we're five races in.

He said, Alex below already has X amount of points.

I forget what, 200 and whatever it's, Whatever it was.

If, if he simply starts the remaining 12 finishes, DFL that stands for dead <inaudible> last.

Right. He will score as many points as the car

who finished 12th in the championship last year.

Meaning he has already, he has already scored enough points to not show up essentially and finish 12 in the Championship to finish, to finish last in every race from here on out for, for 12 races of a 17 race championship.

Yes. He can finish last

and he'll still be in the top 12 in points.

Mm-hmm . Like not even like we get to the end of the season

and guys are fighting over the last spot in Leader circle.

Mm. That's 22nd. Mm-hmm .

We talk about the battles for 22nd and 23rd mm-hmm.

In the last few races. Mm-hmm .

He could be 10 positions ahead of that by just finishing lap, taking the start and pulling into pit lane.

Mm-hmm . At the end going home. Yep.

And going home and sipping on a margarita.

It's, it's wild to, it is the largest points gap to second Points lead that anyone's had after five races in like the history of new car.

Funny. So, so Connor is in a group chat of ours

and um, so I sent that, that fact.

And our buddy Drew was like, and Connor reacted to it.

Um, and our buddy Drew was like, bro, do you wanna know what the good news is?

You are closer. He was talking to Connor.

You are closer to second in the championship with where you are.

Then second is to first and clown's.

Like, actually that is great news.

I feel so much better about how things are gone.

It's easier for Connor to catch second than it is for second to catch below.

Right. Absolutely insane.

Um, 'cause what is it, Kirkwood? That's second right now.

It is, yes. Um,

who had, he had a good day too.

He had a bad qualifying and, and picked up a bunch of spots.

Great. Recover Rita. Great Rita again. Another top 10. Yeah.

Just, I mean it, that's that's pretty, it's pretty impressive I have to say.

Um, what he has done in a coin car, the past two events has been nothing short of astounding actually. So,

So, so right now Kirkwood is 97 points behind polo.

97 points between first and second.

There's less than 10 points between second and sixth .

So the five cars behind him are covered by less than 10.

And, uh, and he's running around out there like a jerk.

97 points in the Lead.

Oh my God. Um, yes. So we got our caution.

The race was, so we technically had two passes for the lead on track, which is good.

Good, I guess. Mm-hmm .

Uh, the race had some interesting ebb and flow throughout the way the tires played out.

Um, so Yeah.

So from, from your seat, I haven't watched the race.

Um, your seat was the tire rule mandate, whatever you wanna call it, was it a success?

Was it, uh, irrelevant? What what did

You This this is a great question.

This is a great question because we, you know, we had this conversation going into this weekend.

I said I didn't love midseason changes and I didn't love this, that the other, but I was gonna go into it open-minded and kind of see I didn't hate it.

I didn't hate it. I think that having

to manage multiple stints on the less preferred tire is harder and it creates more separation.

Especially when it's not like, so if everyone was going like hard, hard, soft, soft, then it wouldn't be, then it's irrelevant.

Right? It's not really that worthwhile.

But because everybody had their own way of approaching it and different ways of approaching it, I didn't hate it.

Now do I think mandating that on a, in DGP is a three stop race, right?

Mm-hmm . A two stopper is not actually feasible. Right.

So do I think this is a smart thing to do at a race where it could be a two or a three?

No. Okay. That's, that's my caveat.

You can't, but You know, you can't cherry pick. I know,

I I agree completely with everything you just said.

I didn't, I didn't hate it.

I thought it was, let's be honest, it didn't, I don't think it changed the outcome of the race any, I think it added another element.

I think you're right, it, it highlighted maybe some strengths and weaknesses of cars.

I thought it was kind of fun knowing that like there there was more tire offsets.

You're racing against people in different tires and you're right, there was ebb and flow and all that sort of thing.

But we cannot, we cannot eliminate, I understand that fuel saving has become a a, a bone of contention for some people.

Um, that's part of IndyCar racing. Yeah.

That is, that is some of the best races we've had is two versus three stop.

Now we have extended some of these races to kind of try and eliminate that.

But there is still, there will be yellows as the season unfolds.

Right. And there will still be opportunities for guys

to take a gamble and cut out a pit stop.

Right. Depending on where the yellow falls.

And if you have a tire rule that prevents you from doing that, you're eliminating that option.

And I don't think that is correct.

I don't think I agree that otherwise why are we refueling? Like what

Exactly.

Like it's just, that is part of the spectacle of what IndyCar is, is no F1 doesn't do it.

Im a kind of does it, but in a fake way.

'cause everyone spends the exact amount of time input lane refueling the car.

It's 30 seconds. Right. So it's like, then why?

So you cannot get rid of that option for someone to roll the dice and to try and stretch it on fuel and make it work.

Because that is part of our, our DNA and our entity is Yes. As a, as a series.

Completely agree. So did it work here?

Yeah, I would say I would give it a passing grade, but like, do I think we should go to Detroit with a three stop rule?

No, I don't, I don't necessarily think that's the way to do it. Because

Ultimately, ultimately as we saw, giving us more stops so that we can push flat out throughout the entire race didn't cause cautions.

The only caution we had was 'cause a car broke down.

It wasn't because people were making mistakes and hitting each other and all this sort of thing.

So, and in barber everybody was pushing flat out. Exactly.

And it didn't change. It, it, you know,

it didn't make any better or worse in that Sense.

So we can't, we can't say that this this tire thing allowed there to be a caution because that's, that's a lie.

That's fake news. Correct.

Correct. Yeah. So, so, okay,

so when IndyCar comes to the drivers, Well they don't listen, so it doesn't matter.

Yeah, I I did like a, the spicy comment from, uh, McLaughlin in the, in the pre-race press conference about this exact hire rule.

Um, okay.

But if IndyCar comes to you and says, Hey, you know this, we, we liked this at Indy gp, what do you think about implementing it somewhere else?

Do you think it's gonna be a universal No.

From the people behind the wheel from the teams? Like let's not even take

Nothing, nothing, nothing is universal.

Um, well actually That it was universal.

This one was no to this.

Um, I don't think it would be universal because I'm sure someone will glean that they had some sort of advantage from doing it this way.

But I would still say the majority will be no.

And if you go based on how we've always made decisions in the past, minus this one, um, it's been a majority vote sort of thing.

So, but I don't have a feeling we're gonna be asked.

So I think we're all gonna be surprised about a race memo, uh, at the end of the month for Detroit.

I just, I just wonder if they, Let me Tell, you'll think about this.

If they, if they mandate running greens twice in Detroit, holy, But that's just it.

Right? Like that, that, and we had this conversation that's

Gonna be, that's gonna be asinine. A

Street's be Such a fake fake, It would be a farce Event.

You're, you're literally gonna have everyone come in on lap one.

So, so I'm thinking like Road America would be another good one for it because Road America, it's always three stops.

Mm-hmm . You can't really do alternate strategies

'cause pit lane's so long, the laps so long. Like you can't say, I, I think

If you, if you're gonna cherry pick and you were gonna do it this way, which I think is dumb, but if you were gonna do it, you have to do the, the bonafide four. Sure. Three stoppers.

Yeah. Um,

'cause like mid Ohio can be both, so it doesn't really work there. Mm-hmm . Um,

Portland can be both.

Portland can be both. Oh, Where else do we go?

Or there road courses do we go to?

That's pretty much it. We're almost done with this that we

Haven't already.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's just Road America, Portland, right? Middle

Ohio.

Middle Ohio. Yeah. Yeah. Five on the day.

Five on the year. That makes sense. We got,

Anyway, a lot of circle tracks coming up.

Which, it's funny, I was talking, I was talking to Ed, um, and I was like, man, it's funny 'cause like Palolo won so many of his championships, um, and he wasn't the, he was Dixon 2.0 in the sense

that like he wasn't the qualifying guy, right?

Like yeah, he was always putting his car on the top seven every weekend.

Right. But he wasn't the the pole guy and you know, the team

and him would execute and, and be very good on, on on sequences and all that sort of thing.

And they would come out with a win and he won championships.

Now he's the qualifying guy too.

Um, which is awesome for him.

I guess , how, how screwed are we all if he also in this off season has figured out ovals because, well, Dude, yeah.

Here's the thing. He hasn't like,

not figured them out like his No, But like, he's not Finishing record's. Not

Terrible.

I know, but he's still you at this point.

Everyone shows up to run street course race and they're like, ugh.

Like there's not, you don't have that feeling going to to ovals yet.

No. Right. I feel like when you go to an oval right now,

you're looking at Joseph, you're looking at Patto as like the kind of two guarantees to be up there, McLaughlin.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Fair. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good call.

Good call. Um, those are kind of your,

your three almost inevitabilities, you know, in the same way that when you go to a Rotor street track, it's your, you know, your PLOS and your, Your Herda and Herda.

Yeah. Um,

but like he's still, like, he's got several podiums.

I know he doesn't have his win yet, but he's got several podiums in ovals.

Um, I think before his crash in Iowa last year, like his worst oval finish was like, oh, sorry.

I I think he, I think he got taken out his very first one in Texas back in like 2020.

But like, I I want to say after that first you since gac, his worst level will finish until that crash at Iowa was like 12th, like 10th or 12th.

Like it was pretty solid.

And like if all you have to do is finish top 10, top 10 in the, well he 90, 97 point lead, he, he doesn't have show Up finish.

Yeah. He doesn't have to do anything. He gonna skip it.

Yeah. Like if he wins Indy,

he might feasibly just miss Detroit because he, you know, he could just take that weekend off, enjoy bit of downtime, do the media that he needs to do.

Speaking of cherry picking, he might just cherry pick the tracks.

He likes . Yeah. Like, oh, I don't really like Portland.

I mean, who does, right. Yeah.

I was gonna stick that one. I ain't going.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Weird, weird.

Um, alright, other racing stuff.

Um, just quickly before we, I just wanna close on your thoughts, uh, heading into practice week, but um, we were talking about this earlier, the shout out to Team Penske and imsa.

Unreal. Unreal. Another one, two at Laguna. Which, how,

How in the, I mean this is kind of similar to what Palolo is doing in a spec.

Yeah. I say that with quote Air Air

Quotations championship, right?

Walking the field in four or five.

Um, but in like a championship, that is the performance and pace is directly controlled in order to make it a better show and more entertaining and more even.

How on earth is Penske doing this?

Right? They're three for three. They're three for three.

Uh, yeah man.

And like, and the first two were 12 and 24 hours long.

They're four for four actually.

What Do you mean they won? They won Long Beach. Oh.

'cause they won. Oh, long five. Forgot about Long Beach.

Um, yes. Sorry, four for four.

I do they win petite last year.

Are they actually like five on the trot?

It doesn't matter. It's, it's insane. I

Think BW won petite, but yeah, It's insane what they're doing it.

But it comes down to execution, right?

Like ultimately if you, if the car Performance is controlled.

Yeah, but I don't care. I don't care.

No, it doesn't because James, like you, we we all have been very a part of BOP, right?

Yes. And there's some tracks where you get hosts,

not intentionally, right, but based on the Just nature of the car Track and whether you have weight or not or power or not or all this sort of thing, fuel or not, like there's gonna be something that disadvantages you.

Mm-hmm And we have had, as you said, a 24 hour race, a 12 hour race, a street course race and a permanent road course race.

And like that Porsche historically has not been the benchmark everywhere.

Like it's, it's been good, but it's not, I'd argue that like the Cadillac has been the benchmark across all these different types of tracks, right?

And then almost the Acura and then the Porsche.

So it's, it's crazy to me what they're able to do unless do they have some wild BOP in their favor?

Like is that a conspiracy theory that we wanna get behind?

I mean it's not impossible. It's not impossible.

We've seen, we've seen sometimes, I mean they don't own that series, right? ?

No. But we have seen at times IMSA waits for

an abundance of evidence that a change is needed before the change is needed.

And you know, you've been on the, on the, on the other side of that where a change was implemented against a team you were driving for that wasn't really based on the car's performance, it's the drivers were like saving fuel intentionally.

And the team or the Sears was like, oh you guys can go to long in your stints.

We're we're taking your fuel ba your fuel tank smaller.

It's like, well no, that's not why, that's not how that should work.

So I don't know, there's a chance that it's just taking a little bit longer for them to react or they're reacting in small amounts.

And look Sebring and, and Daytona, it doesn't matter how fast your car is, right?

You have to be just like good in execute over, like a lot can go wrong for a fast car in 24 hours, right?

Yes. Yes. So it's not always the fastest car

that wins, right?

So yes. Long Beach, yes.

You start up front, you finish up front.

There's not really a lot of strategy there.

Laguna, that's a proper track. The car needs to be working.

Um, so maybe, maybe they're good in those types of tracks and like just kind of outperformed their program in the two enduros we will see as the season goes on.

Uh, but we just wanted to give them a shout out 'cause that was very impressive.

Um, and then yes, we start practicing tomorrow for the 500.

Uh, Alex. Yeah.

How much has changed for you since the open test?

Uh, are you guys going with similar program?

Have you changed a lot?

What's your, what's your deal going into practice? We

Changed virtually nothing.

Um Okay. Change

Virtually nothing.

I mean there's some, there's some very small, uh, component changes that are month of May only.

Um, but in terms of like, it's the same car, same floor, um, same, all of the parts, the good parts that we had at the open test will, will still be on the car.

Um, there's obviously some, some special stuff that goes on all cars up and down the grid, um, come Saturday morning for qualifying.

But yeah, no, it's, it's the car that we left the open test with, happy with.

Um, it's, it's again gonna be a, I think a pretty representative week.

Um, you know, by the time we get to Thursday, it's mid eighties, um, you know, qualifying, the, the draw is gonna be super critical.

You know, it, it's gonna warm up throughout the day on Saturday.

So if you can get an early draw, um, that'll be, that'll make your Saturday quite easy from a stress standpoint at least, um, of, of maybe not having to run again, uh, to get into the fast 12.

Um, and I can tell you, you know, I talked to, I didn't talk to many people after the open test, but I talked to quite a few people, um, during driver intros, uh, for the GP on, on Saturday, you know, just, you know, how was your car on the open test and what do you think and all this sort of thing.

And everyone was like, yeah, it was pretty good, but holy cow Q Sims are hard.

Um, so I think it's gonna be qualifying weekend.

You know, we, we say how it's, um, for me, and I think you agree James, like it's, it's the best weekend IndyCar outside of the 500.

Um, and I think it's gonna be even more wild this year.

Like it's the, the days of bravery in terms of trimming are back and because previously the cars, um, even with the Arrow screen and the added boost that we had in 2020, um, everyone was kind of by everyone.

All of the, the top cars were kind of getting to a similar trim level and then it was just a matter of kind of scrub through the corners and car build.

And if you had a, a very good car in terms of car speed, day, year, and fall off exactly.

Um, this year you, you are not getting to the trim level that, that we previously have gotten to.

Um, so really just 'cause the extra Weight, just 'cause the extra weight.

So that means the opportunity, um, for someone to put a big set of on is gonna exist to try and go for it.

Um, and it's gonna be about can you tolerate it and suck it up and hold it flat for four laps, which is awesome.

That's how it should be. Yeah.

It shouldn't be about, oh, I don't wanna trim too much, so I'm scrubbing too much sort of thing.

Like, I want to trim to the point where I'm dying and I so badly wanna lift on lot four. So it's pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah. That is cool. Cool.

All right, well I'm excited.

Um, good luck over the practice and uh, Tim wants to say something.

Um, just wanna remind everybody, we do have the live show on the 19th.

Alex won't be there. He's got, uh, you know,

some other stuff going on in May, but James and I'll be there, Clayton Anderson will be there.

And then, uh, right after that show, Alex, you have a Java House thing at the track too, if you wanna tell anybody About it.

I do. So I won't, I won't make the live show on the Monday,

um, because it's, and it's as A kid and then suddenly, you know, no Relax, it's too big.

Relax. Uh, it's just

Getting peed on.

It's, uh, right after our session.

And so I gotta, I gotta obviously debrief and then right after the debrief I have a Java House appearance in the Midway.

So if you want to go get your James and Tim fix, um, at the live show, go do that.

And then if you wanna come tell me how terrible Tim is in person.

Yeah. Come do that right

Afterwards, I'll sign your hats.

Yeah. Uh, Tim, remind everybody the deal

with the live show tickets and everything, We, we have the, the link on social.

I'll push that again, uh, so you can get 'em on there.

I, I don't know how many are left. Um, we're, it's

Li it's limited.

It's a full day at the track.

It's not just for the live show.

You get to hang out in a tower terrace suite, it's catered.

There's food, there's drinks, there's the live show once practice is finished.

And then, yeah, mosey Wright, uh, right on down to the midway post hour show to catch the Java house appearance with Alex.

Uh, I'm gonna go bug him 'cause it's fun watching him work, especially when I don't have to do anything Pods, you know?

Yeah, fair. Tim would like some more pods. Yeah.

So that's, uh, that's all coming up guys. It's exciting.

So yes, best of luck in practice.

Best of luck in qualifying. Uh, I'm super excited.

I, I, it's because of what you just said.

You know, I have a whole new like, level of excitement for qualifying this year.

Um, you can watch it all on Fox Practices on FS one and FS two.

And, uh, yeah guys, we will check in next week.

It's crazy to think how many hours you're gonna have been on the track before we talk on the show again.

So we'll have lots to cover, but hopefully we'll see you guys on Monday.

Uh, hopefully we'll see you out at the track over the weekend and over the week.

Come say hi, and we will chat to you guys soon.

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